Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Question the thought
Notice the standard you are holding yourself to, then ask whether you would hold anybody else to it. If what you blame yourself for happened when you were a child, ask honestly whether a child could have carried that.
Shame usually rests on a rule that was never said out loud, something along the lines of I should have known, or I should have stopped it. Written down in plain daylight, most of these turn out to be impossible rules made for an adult and applied to a much smaller person. This is not letting yourself off. It is getting the age right.
Qur’an and Sunnah
How can you tell people to do what is right and forget to do it yourselves (Quran 2:44). The verse challenges keeping one standard for others and another for yourself, and that split runs this way too when you are gentle with everyone except the child you were.
۞أَتَأۡمُرُونَ ٱلنَّاسَ بِٱلۡبِرِّ وَتَنسَوۡنَ أَنفُسَكُمۡ وَأَنتُمۡ تَتۡلُونَ ٱلۡكِتَٰبَۚ أَفَلَا تَعۡقِلُونَ
How can you tell people to do what is right and forget to do it yourselves, even though you recite the Scripture? Have you no sense
Qur’an 2:44read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-regression across 57 studies of veterans with PTSD found that approaches involving direct re-examination of trauma-related beliefs did better than other recommended treatments. Effects in military samples were smaller than in civilian ones, so this is a real advantage rather than a dramatic one. What it supports is going back to the belief itself instead of working around it.
Haagen JF, Smid GE, Knipscheer JW, Kleber RJ. (2015). The efficacy of recommended treatments for veterans with PTSD: A metaregression analysis.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Blame stops fitting once you put the real age and the real power back into the picture.
When not to
If naming what happened brings the memory flooding back rather than a thought you can look at, stop and take this to someone trained.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
A belief you have carried since childhood will not fall over because you asked it a good question this afternoon. You are planting something, not winning an argument.
Name one hard thing today and ask what it might be growing in you: patience, humility, nearness to God.
When a thought lands hard, ask whether you know it for certain, and what you would actually put forward if you had to make the case. Then go looking for the bits that point the other way.